What Nike’s Dive Into Modest Swim Means for Muslim Women

In 1994, when Nike signed on soccer star Mia Hamm, she became the first female soccer player to receive the brand’s endorsement. Two years later at the 1996 Olympics, Nike debuted its first women’s soccer uniform worn by the gold-medal-winning Team USA, whose designs would be used as the framework for future sporting kits. In 1999, Nike went on to release its first-ever women’s soccer boots, the Nike Air Zoom M9 F.G., making it known that Nike’s entry into women’s apparel was not simply a fleeting gesture, but a sincere engagement with the needs of female athletes. In 2020, the athletics brand plans to make another stride in women’s sports by introducing Victory Swim, Nike’s new and innovative modest swimwear collection officially debuting February 1, 2020.

This launch comes two years after the sporting giant debuted its Nike Pro Hijab featuring Olympian fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, and about four months after a viral soccer moment that saw a women’s game momentarily pause as players covered a teammate who needed to adjust her hijab after it came loose. Yes, hijabi women play sports, and yet for years, they’ve had to fashion makeshift outfits meant to simultaneously adhere to their faith while still allowing them room to compete efficiently — a difficult endeavor of trial and error. With Victory Swim, Nike is making it much easier for athletes to swim at the elite level with cutting edge designs.

When it comes to intentional fashion inclusivity, 2019 has seemingly been a banner year. There was the loud and sensual show that was Savage X Fenty during New York Fashion Week — which was both a runway and concert — with models of different sizes, races, and with physical disabilities. The show featured people you would see walking down a busy city street, and not simply those handpicked to represent a narrow-minded fantasy of desire and beauty. Kerby Jean-Raymond’s Pyer Moss collection showcased the layers of Black womanhood as the foreground of rock and roll, delivering an homage to Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Big Mama Thornton, artists who not only gave the genre its grit and grind but shaped its renegade musicality. And then there was the blessed return of Shayne Oliver’s very fly and very queer line Hood By Air —partly inspired by drag ball culture — that had dominated the early 2000s, finding verified fans in Vashtie Kola and Virgil Abloh. All these designers have been steadily breaking the conventional modes set in stone by fashion’s gatekeepers, making Nike’s Victory Swim feel less out of the blue and more in line with the slowly shifting tides of representation in fashion.

Planning for the Victory Swim line began immediately after the end of the 2016 Rio Olympics. The overwhelming response to the Nike Pro Hijab revealed a market in the sports industry and Martha Moore, Nike’s creative director VP and lead on the project, also observed a need during various trips with her Nike swim team. “I would notice in some places that women would be sitting on the beach or by the pool instead of swimming in the water with their children,” she says. “Usually swimming is one of those sports where you mostly see mothers involved and so it was interesting to see and also realize the reasons why they couldn’t be in the water.”

Muhammad, who won a bronze medal in 2016, has been swimming since she was five years old and she was one of the athletes Nike reached out to when it came time for testing. “I have tried on other modest swim and this is by far the most well done one I have come across,” she tells Teen Vogue. “In my few decades of wearing a hijab, I have found that you’re always tugging and pulling at something to make sure nothing comes up when you’re swimming or your hair is not out. I just find an element of ease to the new swimwear collection.”

The Victory Swim line is futuristic, chic, and functional; looking a bit like armor and made of polyester plus lycra for stretch. The high-waisted black leggings have strategically placed mesh vents to increase water outflow along with bonded hems and coated zippers for zero interference. Paired with the tunic top, which has an integrated hijab boasting a handy inner mesh pocket to hold your ponytail and an adjustable built-in bra, the suit is also quick drying with UPF 40+ sun protection. The ease of the Victory Swim collection that Muhammad speaks of was made possible with a little help from biomimicry, in other words, imitating the natural responses of animals to their environments to help find solutions for specific human problems. In this case, Nike looked at aquatic life as its source of inspiration.

“Biomimicry led us to fish and fish led us to sharks,” says Moore, who also happens to be one of the designers who spearheaded Nike’s 1999 Women’s World Cup soccer uniforms. “Sharks are fierce, sleek, very dynamic, and have a kind of don’t-mess-with-me attitude just like most women. But what we loved about them is that they breath in the water through the use of gills. So we took that same thinking and built these water flow gills into the Victory Suit.” She continues, “Those vents that are mesh-based behind the hijab, under the sleeves, under the yoke, behind the knees, and under the feet perform that same method. It’s very cool.” The Nike Victory two-piece Full-Coverage Swimsuit, which includes leggings plus a tunic and integrated hijab, will retail for $600, while separates from the Nike Victory Swim collection can be purchased starting from $40 for the hijab and capping at $80 for the top.

During the creative process, Moore’s team discovered that, for this particular consumer and athlete, it was not only going to be about creating a body-conscious fit, but the suit also needed to be body-skimming. This revelation came from the first-hand experiences of collegiate-level athletes who had to train or do swim rehab while wearing tights under basketball shorts, along with one or two sports bras, then a long-sleeve shirt under a basketball tank top, ending with a swim cap placed on top of a hijab. All of this drastically limited their mobility and prevented them from doing the kind of rehab exercises they needed to do. Victory Swim was therefore manufactured to effortlessly glide through water. It’s a design necessity that Muhammad found to be particularly well executed. “I feel like everything was thought of. You don’t want to feel like you have on an entire swimsuit underneath a swimsuit. It’s nice to have just one or two pieces and feel like this is the complete look, this is all I need. I think for me that is the pinnacle of doing modest fashion well in general.”

A current college athlete with hopes of becoming an Olympian left Moore with one of the most affirming anecdotes after testing the line. “She tried on the Victory swimsuit and when she came out of the locker room she was in a state of high emotion, crying with joy,” Moore says. “Joy for how this was going to change the world for her mom, aunts, and cousins because they were going to be able to participate in the sport that she loves. That sheer delight and joy was breathtaking.”

Nike’s shift to modest swimwear is the kind of move that will undoubtedly draw ire from the same people who were angered by the burkini and Nike’s ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, as well as accusations that the brand is capitalizing on inclusivity. As for the latter point, unlike prior conflicts, this is the kind of situation where both sides have concerns that are legitimate and deserving of exploration. Corporations have always set their sights on the bottom line, following the money, and creating products that will ensure financial success. Yet, while we are living in an era of rampant white supremacy and right-wing policymakers, there are more progressive voices and generations of consumers who are widely equipped, now more than ever, with the capacity to influence society and commerce in ways wholly unimaginable less than a decade prior. The commercialization of equity is an inevitable reality of living in a capitalist society, and yet as money is being made, access is being granted to those who were previously unable to partake.

With every step made toward representation by a company with as much of a cultural influence as Nike, which is also the home of Serena, Lebron, Simone, Allyson, and Muhammad, millions of consumers will be able to participate in an industry that actively caters to their needs. While French retailer Decathlon pulled back on selling a sports hijab in France earlier this year after outrage from politicians and citizens who called the clothing item “a break from our [French] values,” (in 2016, France also banned the burkini), Nike’s Victory Swim is a reminder that all women can and should have the choice to perform sports as they see fit. And with such accessible, ultramodern clothing, they can truly just do it.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue